Unrequited Love? 16th-Century Erotic Poem Discovered

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Nearly 450 years ago, when England was tearing itself apart over
religion, a Catholic woman named Lady Elizabeth Dacre wrote an
elegant but at times erotic Latin love poem to Sir Anthony Cooke,
a Protestant and tutor to King Edward VI, the successor of Henry
VIII.

That poem was rediscovered recently in the West Virginia
University library, inside a 1561 copy of Chaucer. It hints at a
love affair that was not to be.

"It's a very beautiful piece and I think for her it was quite a
prized possession, because it's been so very carefully copied out
and looked after," Elaine Treharne, a professor at Florida State
University, told LiveScience.

While a visiting professor at the university, Treharne discovered
the love poem in the library's rare-book collection inside
the cover of the Chaucer book. Working with colleagues she
translated it from Latin and confirmed Elizabeth Dacre as its
author. Her analysis, which will be detailed in an upcoming
issue of the journal Renaissance Studies, also suggests Dacre
wrote the poem in the 1550s or 1560s. [ 6
Most Tragic Love Stories in History ]

Love translated

The first part of the poem, as translated by Treharne, seems to
refer to a period in 1553 when Cooke, under the reign of Mary I,
was sent to the Tower of London and then exiled. It reads:

"The goodbye I tried to speak but could not utter with my
tongue
by my eyes I delivered back to yours.
That sad love that haunts the countenance in parting
contained the voice that I concealed from display,
just as Penelope, when her husband Ulysses was present,
was speechless – the reason is that sweet love of a gaze ..."

"Long enough am I now; but if your shape should swell under its
grateful burden, then shall I become to you a narrow
girdle."

While Cooke would almost certainly have seen the poem,
Treharneisn't certain that there actually was a romance between
the two.

"It might represent some kind of
love affair, [or] it might be a more academic exercise, it's
very difficult to determine," Treharne said. "If it was a
rhetorical exercise I wonder why she kept it."

A love story behind the poem?

Dacre was born as Elizabeth Leybourne, in 1536, according to
historical sources. And so at the time Cooke went into exile in
1553 she would have been 17 years old and he well into his 40s.
Cooke's wife, Anne, died in that same year. It's possible that
Cooke tutored the unmarried Elizabeth, Treharne said.

"If this affair occurred, it might have taken place, perhaps at
court, around 1553, at which time Cooke left for the Continent
for five years, his own wife Anne having died in that same year,"
Treharne writes in the journal article.

In 1555, while Cooke was in exile and Mary I was on the throne,
Elizabeth married Thomas Dacre, an English baron. The fact that
she refers to herself as a "Dacre" in the poem suggests that she
composed it sometime after she was married.

A Tudor power couple

In November 1558, Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, ascended to
the throne. Cooke returned from exile, a widower. At this point
Dacre was
married with children.

The only opportunity Elizabeth would have had to get together
with Cooke, without divorcing Thomas, would have been in 1566
when the Baron died. However, this never happened and mere months
after the Baron's death the widowed Dacre married Thomas Howard,
the Duke of Norfolk and a Protestant himself. [ The
Most Powerful Women Leaders ]

"I think it was a political move, that that marriage was a
very political undertaking," Treharne said. Dacre had a
considerable amount of land, as did the Duke. "Marrying the Duke
of Norfolk and consolidating all that land would have been the
most judicious thing to do."

It was a union that made her powerful as well. "At one point she
was probably the next- most-powerful
woman in the kingdom, after the Queen," said Treharne.

But while she had power she may not have had love. She died while
giving birth in 1567. A book published in 1857 by a latter Duke
of Norfolk suggested that when she was dying she was not allowed
to see a Catholic priest, something which Treharne calls an act
of "cruelty."

"the Duchesse . . . desir’d to have been reconciled by a Priest,
who for that end was conducted into the garden, yet could not
have access unto her, either by reason of the Duke’s vigilance to
hinder it, or at least of his continual presence in the chamber
at that time." (From the book "The lives of Philip Howard, Earl
of Arundel and of Anne Dacres, his Wife," published in 1857)

As for Sir Cooke, he never remarried, and died in 1576, at
more-than-70 years of age. A statue was erected in his memory.

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